Hurricane Floyd / Hurricane Matthew empirical disaster resilience study

This report presents two types of studies that have been conducted. An exploratory study examined whether 17 theoretical indicators of resilience demonstrate whether communities saved time and money as they recovered from Hurricane Matthew. The other study, a losses avoided study, examined whether the acquisition of flood-prone properties by county and municipal governments increased resilience following Hurricane Matthew. The hazard mitigation projects in the study were implemented after Hurricane Floyd, which struck the coast of North Carolina in 1999 and caused $2 billion of damage, and before Hurricane Matthew, which struck the coast of South Carolina in 2016 and moved north, causing $967 million in North Carolina.

Both studies identified numerous data collection challenges related to both pre- and posthurricane conditions. Recommendations are similar to those made in published literature. The recommendations are to (1) improve data by collecting and saving it on a day-to-day basis in the weeks and months after a disaster, (2) codify data collection as part of existing post-event procedures to improve comparability of measures across different jurisdictions, and (3) include post-disaster funding in data collection to document the rapidity with which post-disaster grants are implemented. Only with reliable data can resilience be examined more closely in the future.